With several hit singles and a slew of musical accolades already in tow, the New Jersey-raised K-pop singer reflects on her journey from the object of netizen outrage to respected rising star.
by STEVE HAN
“How could this happen? Why is a U.S. citizen going to sing our national anthem? What if she starts singing the American anthem instead? She only came here to make money!”
Those were just a few of the jabs South Korean netizens hurled at Ailee, after the young Korean American singer was chosen to perform the “Aegukga” on opening day of the Korean professional baseball season in April 2012.
Baseball is arguably Korea’s most popular professional sport, and for K-pop artists, singing the country’s national anthem on the season’s first day is considered a high privilege. So, when news of the selection of Ailee—a fresh-faced K-pop singer whom most Koreans at that point only knew from her appearance on the MBC reality show Singer and Trainee—went public, netizens lit up the blogosphere with scathing criticism.
“I was really, really proud to sing the Korean anthem because I’m Korean!” recalled Ailee, 23, during an interview in February at the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles. “But I got a lot of unexpected criticism. I was really hurt. I mean … really, really hurt.”
But when the moment of truth came, the singer stepped up to the mike behind home plate and did what she had been doing throughout her young career—she sang from the heart. It may have been the anthem of her parents’ motherland, but it had deep meaning for her as a Korean American, too.
“When I finished the anthem and saw people applauding me, I was so, so thankful,” she said. “That’s when I really learned that music does speak louder than words.”
Although Ailee’s career got off to a rocky start, it seemed the more she performed before Korean audiences, the more they embraced her. Amid a big field of K-pop singers, Ailee stood out for her soul-laden, R&B vocals, as well as her captivating stage presence—she often ad-libbed vocal effects, something uncommon among her overly rehearsed peers.
“There are a lot of talented singers in K-pop, but Ailee has something beyond singing skills that doesn’t make her look awkward on stage,” Cho Hye-ri, a veteran pop singer known by his stage name, Wax, told the Korean website OhmyStar last November. “I had a feeling she’d make it big when I first saw her, and I’m happy to see her do so well now.”
Indeed, Ailee today is a bonafide K-pop star, with three singles that have already hit Billboard Korea’s Hot 100.
Her debut song, “Heaven,” broke into the Hot 100 within days of its release in February 2012, and remained in the top 10 for seven consecutive weeks. In addition, the smooth R&B hit would help her earn five different Best New Artist awards—at the Mnet Asian Music Awards, Seoul Music Awards, Golden Disk Awards, Melon Music Awards and Gaon Chart K-pop Awards.
Ailee released her mini-album, titled Invitation, last October when the worldwide euphoria of Psy’s “Gangnam Style” was at its peak. Just a month later, her track “I’ll Show You” overtook “Gangnam Style” for the No. 1 spot on Music Bank, Korea’s only chart-driven live music show on terrestrial television, after Psy’s viral hit had been on top for 10 straight weeks.
Coincidentally, KoreAm Journal interviewed Ailee on the day of the one-year anniversary of the release of “Heaven.” She was in Los Angeles in February to accept yet another honor—this time, Mnet America’s Rising Star Award at the network’s first Annual Pre-Grammy Party.
“I just can’t believe all this is happening,” said the young artist, dressed in a leopard-print blazer, with her hair swept up in a bun. “Last year, I could not have imagined that I’d be sitting in this room, having an interview. “Even after I performed [Korea’s national] anthem, some people were still angry that it had to be me who sang the anthem,” Ailee said, with a grin. “A lot of people think that I came out of nowhere.”
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Born in Denver, Colo., and raised in New Jersey, Ailee, then Amy Lee, had harbored a dream since childhood to become a singer. As she tells it, one “boring” day in February 2006, the sophomore at Scotch Plains High School in New Jersey decided to upload a 20-second YouTube video of herself singing “Amazing Grace.” Far from going viral, the video, a few weeks after going up, garnered only three comments—albeit, positive ones. “Wow,” one person wrote in the comment section. “She’s good.”
But Ailee had already been told several times that she was good. It was just that the curious teenager was skeptical, and wasn’t sure if people around her were being honest.
“I’ve gotten a lot of good comments from people telling me that I can sing,” she said. “But I never believed them because I wasn’t too confident with my singing skills. I guess it’s kind of weird now because, when you say my name, people say, ‘Oh, [she has] so much confidence!’”
Ailee figured YouTube would let her know how good she really was. So, on another boring day at home, she posted a second video of herself, this time singing Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All.” Over the next few months, Ailee posted more covers of other popular songs by Rihanna, Alicia Keys and Jordin Sparks on her YouTube channel. Those videos, which clocked in over 2 million combined views on YouTube, went on to mark the beginning of a string of events so unexpected that Ailee may still wake up one night wondering if all of this is just a dream.
In less than a year, she had taken YouTube by storm and even attracted the attention of a TV producer from Maury, the syndicated tabloid talk show, who randomly left a comment one day on her channel, asking her to perform on the show. A delighted Ailee accepted the offer and performed “Unfaithful” by Rihanna, marking her American national television debut. Maury is no Oprah, but Ailee said the performance marked a key moment in her career. “It was my first TV appearance, so it helped a lot with exposure because a lot of people didn’t know who I was,” she said. “I’m still proud of it.”
Although the appearance exposed her to a mainstream American audience, Ailee actually was more interested in getting the attention of record labels in Korea. Her dream since childhood was, in fact, to perform on stage in her ancestral motherland. Perhaps it may sound odd that a U.S. native envisioned achieving stardom in a country she had never before called home, but Ailee grew up speaking Korean, and being exposed to Korean TV shows and music during her upbringing in New Jersey.
“I wanted my first break to be in Korea,” Ailee said. “I grew up listening to K-pop. I grew up with S.E.S., G.O.D., and Fin.K.L. Oh—and remember Baby V.O.X.? I remember listening to their songs and copying their dance moves. I always wanted to do K-pop.”
Various Korean record labels did give Ailee offers, but she said she was waiting for the right match. “I like being free,” Ailee said. “I don’t like being so trapped, but all the companies wanted to put pressure on me.”
The right offer finally came from Jin-A Entertainment in 2010, when she was attending Pace University inNew York as a junior communications major. She was called in for an audition in Seoul, where she sang “If I Got You,” and was signed on the spot.
Jin-A Entertainment CEO Jo Bang-hun, known publicly by his stage name Tae Jin-ah, is a prominent Korean trot artist. The veteran singer-cum-entrepreneur launched a sub-label, YMC Entertainment, in 2011, and handed its operation to his son, Jo Yoo-myung, who grew up in New York. The mission of the sub-label was to promote younger artists, as his name was already so deeply associated with the trot genre, pop music designed to appeal to the older generation.
“My CEO [Jo Yoo-myung], he’s really, really chill. He treats me like a person, before I’m an artist,” said Ailee. “And that’s what got me to sign with him.”
Ailee made her Korean TV debut in September 2011 on MBC’s Singer and Trainee, which features aspiring artists performing various songs and being judged by a panel comprised of veteran singers. She first got the audience’s attention with a duet performed with Korea’s leading R&B singer Wheesung; however, it was her rousing solo performance of Beyonce’s “Halo” in the following episode that enthralled not just the audience, but some of the most recognized figures within K-pop.
“She has the voice to become a star anywhere in the world,” said singer BMK, director of the Soul Train Vocal Academy, who was one of the judges on the show.
Kim Bum-soo, another one of Korea’s respected R&B and soul singers, posted a link to Ailee’s performance of “Halo” via Twitter along with a message that read, “Korea doesn’t seem to be too far away from producing a world-class singer.”
She would win over even more fans when she earned a role on Immortal Song 2: Singing the Legend, a popular TV reality show that features K-pop idols performing remixes of classic hits.
On the show, Ailee performed legendary folk artist Yang Hee-eun’s “Morning Dew,” a tune from the mid-1970s that was considered highly controversial at the time because Korea’s then-military dictatorship interpreted the lyrics as anti-government and banned it. Though Ailee had never before heard the song, the lyrics so moved her that she wasn’t just shedding a few tears while performing it on national TV, she was balling her eyes out.
“Performing ‘Morning Dew’ was an extension of how I felt while I sang the [South Korean national] anthem,” Ailee said. “I learned that this song was essentially an anthem for Korean people who had to suffer. It’s a song about how they had to overcome difficulties.”
Because the singer was still reeling from the criticism from members of the Korean public, she said she could relate to this feeling of trying to overcome hardship. “So when I performed the song, I got really emotional.”
Ailee, during an interview in Los Angeles in February.
Her appearance on Immortal Song would turn out to be a pivotal move for the artist. And in a way, her lack of familiarity with the old Korean songs and the tight schedule of the show, which gave artists about two weeks to learn and reinterpret an assigned song, played to Ailee’s strengths. Unlike many K-pop artists, Ailee isn’t one to rehearse religiously, and it’s not because she’s lazy.
“I don’t like being trapped in a box,” she explained. “That’s why I put in ad-libs and different melodies when I perform. When you practice too much, you get cornered into thinking that you can only perform a song in a certain way.”
What resulted was a growing respect for her commanding stage demeanor and, some might say, her out-and-out swagger.
“I think I’m more accepted because I’m real,” Ailee said. “I don’t try to be a teenybopper. I speak the truth, speak what’s on my mind, and people accepted that.”
Ailee would also make her acting debut in last year’s KBS television series Dream High Season 2, in which she played a member of a fictitious K-pop idol group called HershE.
“I definitely want to get into acting again in the far future,” Ailee said. “It was so much fun. I keep telling my staff members I want to do it again.”
As Ailee sits in the hotel lobby reflecting on a career that is still on the rise, she insists she is still in a state of disbelief. Just a year earlier, after all, she was being attacked for singing Korea’s national anthem at a baseball game. But the journey from there to here, in a way, helped the artist nurture the conviction that she could make it an arguably cookie-cutter industry just by being herself.
Incidentally, Ailee doesn’t see any conflicting loyalty in singing Korea’s national anthem. “Because I’m proud to accept who I am [as Korean American], I would feel just as proud to sing the American anthem, too,” she said.
The singer admits to entertaining the faint dream of bringing her career home to the States one day—and that opportunity may come sooner rather than later. When Ailee walked the red carpet at the pre-Grammy event last February, she did so with world famous record producer Tony Maserati, who incidentally won a Grammy in 2003 for his work on Beyonce’s smash hit, “Crazy In Love.”
“We talked, and he said it’d be really great to [work with] me here one day,” the singer said. “Then I was like, ‘I can’t believe he just said that!’”
But for now, Ailee, who is working on a new album that she hopes to release later this year, is taking it one day at a time.
“I still have a long way to go,” she said. “I’ve only done this for a year, and I’m happy with how I’m living right now. I’m too busy to think about what I want to do later. I know, it’s kind of sad.”
Or maybe, it’s just that the young artist is already living her dream.
“I always wanted to be a singer since I was a little girl,” said Ailee. “I don’t even remember when, or what triggered it, but ever since that became reality, I just want to live every day, and do my best at what I’m doing now.”
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This article was published in the May 2013 issue of KoreAm. Subscribe today! To purchase a single issue copy of the May issue, click the “Buy Now” button below. (U.S. customers only. Expect delivery in 5-7 business days).
